At an airport, each aircraft arriving at the airport is provided with a schedule describing, e.g., at which stand, i.e. a parking area for the aircraft, it is to arrive and at what time. An airport operational database (AODB) comprises information about arriving (and departing) aircraft, and in particular information about the type/and or version, the assigned stand and expected arrival time of each arriving aircraft. The AODB is connected to a Flight Information Display system (FIDS) in which a computer system controls mechanical or electronic display boards or TV screens in order to display arrivals and departures and optionally other flight information.
The information in the AODB and/or the FIDS can sometimes be incorrect which means that an aircraft might be directed to a stand which is prepared for a completely different aircraft type and/or version. In such a situation an arriving aircraft may accidentally be damaged in that e.g. a wing or other part of the aircraft may collide with luggage trucks at the stand, the connection bridge used for unloading the passengers on the aircraft, or even the terminal building itself. On top the fact that the costs for repairing a damaged aircraft are very high, a collision between an aircraft and any other object may also cause personal injury to personnel at the airport/aircraft as well as serious disturbances in the air traffic due to long repair times, re-scheduling of flights, etc.
Today most commercial aircraft are manufactured using a large amount of composite materials instead of light-weight metals as was dominant a few years back. If an aircraft comprising a fuselage made entirely or partially of composite material collides with a foreign object, e.g. at a stand, there is a great risk that the actual damage, e.g. small cracks in the composite material, will be very hard to locate by visual inspection only. Thus, due to the very high demands on safety, even an insignificant collision will call for extensive fault localization on the aircraft.
Some prior art aircraft docking systems try to solve this problem by displaying the expected aircraft type and/or version at the stand. However, the pilot might under unfortunate circumstances, e.g. due to mistake, choose to ignore this information and approach the stand anyway.
Alternatively, the information displayed by the docking system might be correct but the pilot drives the aircraft to the wrong stand, i.e. a stand assigned for another aircraft. Again, the aircraft then might accidentally be damaged in colliding with luggage trucks, the bridge, or even the terminal building.